Ultimately, the recent debate we’ve had on social mobility proves, yet again, that there is no single reality we all inhabit. Our vision is selective and only shows us what we want and are prepared to see.
I see the United States of overwhelming and absolutely fantastic social mobility that is unparalleled by anything in the world. As an outsider to this culture, I find it unbelievable how easy mobility is here. The people I know – immigrants and non-immigrants – are achieving incredible ascents, and to be fully honest, it isn’t like anybody is driving themselves into a grave with extremely hard work to do that.
The people who see nothing but sad, endless drudgery that barely allows to stay afloat are not lying and are not inventing anything. This is really what they see. Of course why they see this and not the alternative, and more importantly, what effect this peculiarity of vision has on their own lives, is a question I believe is worth asking.
Or not, if this worldview is too convenient to let it go. I know mine definitely is.
Clarissa's Blog 
I think you walked right into the “my excuse” that people set up to narrativize their failures as not their fault. Never mess with people’s excuses for their failures, because it causes them to experience a lot of anger.
My worldview is that middle class people face much greater competition now. It’s easier for them to say that their failure to do better than their parents was the result of less social mobility rather than their inability to compete with a bigger pool of people vying for the prize. Think of how easy it must have been for a white middle class male with a good high school record to get into Columbia in 1970. As for me, I like the tough competition and I like diversity. This is why the “shut down graduate school programs” from disgruntled PhDs is laughable. They think if there were fewer PhDs in their field someone somewhere might be forced to hire them out of desperation.
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“Never mess with people’s excuses for their failures, because it causes them to experience a lot of anger.”
“My worldview is that middle class people face much greater competition now. It’s easier for them to say that their failure to do better than their parents was the result of less social mobility rather than their inability to compete with a bigger pool of people vying for the prize. ”
“Think of how easy it must have been for a white middle class male with a good high school record to get into Columbia in 1970.”
“This is why the “shut down graduate school programs” from disgruntled PhDs is laughable. They think if there were fewer PhDs in their field someone somewhere might be forced to hire them out of desperation.”
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My failure is to do with I can’t stand middle class values. I realize that it what it is. They speak to me of all sorts of debasement. And I am only just starting to see through them! It is true that there are genuine hardships, but a lot of people who are of a middle-brow condition do not act heroically or really anything beyond the infantile. They require to be taken care of. It is possible not to work oneself to death these days if one has courage and plans, but many still participate in a daily gind that is soul destroying. Or would be, if they had a soul. You can feel sorry for many people and their predicaments — but not TOO sorry. There’s always much, much more that could have been done.
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Here’s my basis for a new philosophical novel, which is concerned with the infantry stage of life
http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/the-infantry-stage.html
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I think there are two separate issues.
One is social mobility (which is going to be problematic to define). But you can’t compare extremely highly educated immigrants with minimally educated natives (one of the issues that people are dancing around is that for vast segments of the population education has cratered out and is in terrible shape).
The other is stratification – phasing out the middle class in favor of a haves and have-not society (that’s what the phrase ‘average is over’ means) which the US is going (back) to being. Essentially the US is now back at the beginning of the 19th century (high immigration, unfettered status seeking and increasing social stratification, slightly mitigated by generous welfare benefits). That cycle peaked in about 1920, I think the US is still a few years away from that.
Again, this blog (despite some problems) the blog http://akinokure.blogspot.com is really invaluable at looking at cycles in American culture, popular, political and social.
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Where do you think the “extremely highly educated immigrants” got their education? Not in their third-world countries, at least not the ones I know. It isn’t like anybody is born educated.
I strongly believe that in North America today everybody who wants to get educated is getting educated. Everybody who isn’t is just making excuses. There are zero obstacles, and I insist, zero, to learning. Everybody has time to sit in Instagram all day long but they don’t have time to read? There is absolutely no way anybody who was born in North America could have had it harder than I did because at least they spoke their own language and knew how to turn on the heating and get on the bus. There is such a small effort people need to make but they are not making it, and that’s their choice.
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“Where do you think the “extremely highly educated immigrants” got their education? Not in their third-world countries”
I thought you had at least started a university degree program in Ukraine? Anyone coming to the US a graduate student is pretty highly educated.
“I strongly believe that in North America today everybody who wants to get educated is getting educated”
Then why are there so many holes in the education of your students?
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Weren’t you around when I was publishing the posts on my “education ” in Ukraine? Those were funny.
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I did everything up to and including Ph.D. in my home country, only did postdoc in the States. And I know some more people like that. However, I admit that had I been in the US longer and had I the US degree, I’d probably end up in a more famous school…
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US has fantastic opportunities compared to many places, yes, and has a kind of variety that is almost unparalleled, as well. One difference I can see now, though, from some points in the past is that there are more other places that are also viable. Part although not all of this has to do with salary compression in many US professions combined with improvements elsewhere, such that we are somewhat less obviously the slam-dunk best option. Example: past: I would never have considered a Latin American job, could not afford to take one. Now: there are some that would in fact keep me up as well as I am kept up here. That’s due to a combination of my being in a low salary state anyway, and job conditions improving there.
I had lunch today with someone who in same job a generation ago would be less broke than said job makes one now. It´s someone who has risen a lot in terms of class but in whose field that rise happened to coincide with income drop in field. Once again: it’s complex.
If you mean the mention of a “shrinking middle class” is an expression of ressentiment from people who feel that they would be better off without competition from women, “minorities,” immigrants, etc., well, there are people who do feel such ressentiment. But I think what is generally meant by it is simply the decline in real wages.
I find the extreme relativism in “people see what they want to see, and it is real to them” rather disingenuous / decontextualizing … everything is internal and is about the psyche.
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“I find the extreme relativism in “people see what they want to see, and it is real to them” rather disingenuous / decontextualizing … everything is internal and is about the psyche.”
Yeah, that is way too New Age for me. Perhaps it is rhetorical hyperbole, to get people to see how much they can influence reality, but It’s better to maintain the notion that one is throwing out bat radar signs and trying to get coordinates on a world that is, after all, out there.
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If one person is seeing stories of breathtaking ascents and another person is seeing stories of stagnation and thwarted ascents , what are the possible explanations? One is that one of the people is lying. But what if we assume they are both honest people and their stories are true? What can we conclude other than that both are seeing only what they want to see? What would be the third possibility here?
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Another explanation: both have injected too much of their own emotion into the experience.
Many more explanations could also exist.
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It’s not “another explanation. ” It’s what I said from the start. 🙂
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I think one of the reasons why Westerners are so unhappy is that they relativise things far too much. It’s a bad habit to get into. Don’t get into it, Clarissa. Very poor people who share common terms of reference, which is to say an objective reality, are happier just for that reason. Those who say, “reality is all in my head” are endlessly fraught and backbiting and fundamentally confused about what reality is. The truth is that SOME of reality is in our heads, but some is outside of our heads.
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The third possibility is reality: it is not neither nor and many of the individual changes have been less than breathtaking. You are trying to say it has all been to extreme A or extreme B. That is rarely true of anything and it is not true in this case. That is to say, you have set up a false dilemma.
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This should seem somewhat obvious, but I think your view of practical social mobility tends to involve how much you value remaining in the chair you tend to occupy.
If you don’t intend to stay in that chair or if your chair floats around the world, depending on the hotels and homes you stay in, then I’d say your outlook tends to be upwardly aspirational anyway.
I see the same thing in the UK but with a different set of flavours, so to speak — immigrants are taking relatively easy jobs that the average Brit doesn’t seem to want, in addition to taking relatively difficult jobs the average Brit isn’t capable of performing.
Hence why Tesco’s sandwiches are now being made by Hungarians:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/10/sandwich-firm-fill-vacancies-factory-east-european-workers
Admittedly for the price, their sandwiches are pretty good. 🙂
But imagine how strange it must be for someone aspirational to consider someone else who doesn’t have a problem with being a “giro technician” instead of a sandwich maker …
On the other end of things, City jobs tend to be given to people who have proven potential or performance, so it’s more or less a meritocracy on that end.
You realise that the present Governor of the Bank of England is in fact a Canadian? 🙂
In the middle, everyone else appears to be afraid their chair will be removed, regardless of how uncomfortable it might have been all along …
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Looking at this issue over the arc of a lifetime (I’m 66) and also over the arc of several generations, I have a more sympathetic view.
“I see the United States of overwhelming and absolutely fantastic social mobility” You have every right to that view, Clarissa, and as a follower of your blog, I know that your opinions are always well-informed and reasoned.
But your views on social mobility in the U.S. and Europe are skewed in part because you are an “outsider to this culture,” and in part because you are in possession of a way-above-average intellect and have a talent for absorbing, evaluating, and communicating information. I imagine you are in the top percentile in those respects. It’s ridiculous to judge masses of people, most of whom do not possess your brainpower, and conclude that they’re just not trying hard enough.
I believe that every human being must make do with the intelligence and talents they are endowed with, as well as the random advantages and obstacles encountered in each life. I also believe that each generation encounters different historical circumstances.
For example, all males in Great Britain in the years 1914 to 1917, with few exceptions, participated in the World War, regardless of wealth or class. Their generation was divided by luck into the quick and the dead. The Englishmen who perished in the trenches were denied opportunity to succeed or fail. The ones who survived inherited a world with radically changed opportunities for success, and even for social mobility. (Just to underline the unfairness of opportunity, English women of that generation were denied practically every opportunity, by our standards, but they were also spared from death in the trenches.)
For another example, it’s impossible for most people to understand the difficulty of escaping the culture and poverty of America’s inner-city ghettos. It makes no sense at all to say that those Americans have “absolutely fantastic social mobility.” And yes, simply the color of your skin can be a major deterrent to upward mobility.
Millions of Americans have been randomly cut loose from opportunity by economic upheaval resulting automation, computerization, and relocation of industries. I was a journalist, but I outlived my industry. I’ve survived, but downward mobility has been nearly unavoidable for an entire cadre of older workers due to disappearing industries. And younger workers entering the workforce face daunting and disorienting competition for a dwindling number of jobs.
As “mm” says, competition at present is intense, relative to other times. Cliff rightly describes increased stratification. As “Z” points out, salary compression is beyond the control of the individual. I might add that salary compression is also beyond the control of the mass of individuals, because of the demise of unions. And Jones observes some of the nuances involved in the mobility issue.
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I follow a lot of Ukrainian and Russian blogs. People back there are really suffering right now with the war; the economic collapse. This is all coming on the heels of history that is nothing short of horrific. But the way they write is so strong, so confident, joyful, optimistic. And then I read a blog of some Western academic whose idea of extreme hardship is a hang nail, and it’s all so tragic , apocalyptic and overwrought that you’d think this and not the energetic Ukrainian is writing from a war zone.
There is a problem here and I can see it precisely because I’m exposed to different cultures.
I’m extremely happy I spent the first decade in immigration bring extremely unsociable because these gloomy rantings I keep hearing everywhere now are very psychologically onerous.
People, have you considered that your social mobility might not be what you want at least in part because you drive yourself into a depression trading stories of apocalypse?
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It’s gotten to a point where I have to read websites for people in sales every day just to preserve my sanity and be able to work. Because at least they don’t spend all of their time in deep mourning. Tell me, how many of you are ecstatically happy for at least a few hours a day? Is your worldview resulting in extreme joy? And if not, what’s the point of holding on to it with such dedication? What has it done for you lately that’s so amazing? Because I can give a list of what’s mine done for me.
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Okay this shows how different we are. My brief encounters with sales were utter torture and I would surely starve to death if I ever had to depend on my ability in that field and I can’t think of anything more depressing than websites aimed at sales people.
It’s an honorable profession and I admire people with that skill, but lordy I don’t have it and want to be nowhere near it.
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Actually, yes. Seeing what is happening doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy life or cannot be happy personally.
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They are just poisoned by the “You can have it all” mindset which makes basically everyone depressed who takes it seriously, because seriously who can really “have it all”? Nobody, not even the smartest, richest, most educated, most beautiful, etc. person in the world, as “all” is an infinite number that no one can ever achieve. I guess this idiotic slogan which was taken seriously by far too many people was invented by big corps who wanted to motivate people to consume more and more so one day maybe they can “have it all”.
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I think people on the whole yearn to live without the burden of history or externally ascribed higher purpose. It’s far easier for immigrants to the US to achieve both of these than it is for the native born (who do things like move to other continents to do so without the material perks of the US).
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This is why I like living abroad, certainly, or as I would say, because I can more easily be myself and not what I am assigned to be.
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To me, Editor offers the only comments that are actually supported by data.
First, let me tick off a few of the changes going on in the US:
50% of Americans today do not have a college education, most of that due to costs. The percent without this education is increasing. Schools (especially lesser, private) are filling seats by aggressive third world recruitment. Nothing new, this has been true for years.
In moving away from SAT scores, colleges are moving in the direction of more subjective admissions decisions which favor children of the rich. The folks who have to work after school to help the family pay bills don’t have much time for the activities that appeal to admissions people. At least Brown Univ. has been honest about reserving seats for rich kids (those who can pay full freight without assistance).
If you are the child of a middle class household, there are opportunities. If you are the child of a poor household, you are very likely to wind up in the military. Once in, f you’re smart, you stay there. You won’t get rich, but you will be able to care for your kids.
There have been studies establishing that it is much easier to rise from poverty to affluence in Western Europe today than in the US. Even among the older affluent, a lot of my friends who have gotten jobs in UK have chosen to stay there rather than return to the US.
There are lower income households in which adults hold three jobs each. (Census has statistics on this.) On that basis, I question comments about not working hard. There are people who work very hard.
I’m really annoyed about comments about sales. We are all in sales. In academia, you are selling yourself to get tenure or a chair. In business, even if you don’t have a sales quota, you are selling yourself and your company to keep the money flowing and get promoted. You have the choice of aggressively selling yourself or becoming irrelevant. With the march toward elimination of tenure, we’re going to have a lot of people cast back out to the job market with no currently relevant skills.
It requires roughly $2,000,000 today to have a conventional retirement (and that number might be low). Most people will never have that, so most won’t ever retire. Retirement was a relic of the golden age of the US economy. I’ll be working until I drop, and I’m OK with that.
Conclusion: There is some mobility in the US, but it is limited to a portion of the population, not everyone. Mobility is becoming more restricted as the US moves toward creation of a permanent underclass. People who have come from other environments may find mobility better than what they had in the past, but it is worse than it was in the US. People who feel that poverty is due entirely to personal sloth are so out of touch with reality as to require someone to dress and feed them. And if you despise sales people, grow up — you’re in sales.
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We should all agree that perceptions of wealth, poverty, opportunity and mobility are relative. ATTITUDES and EMOTIONS such as pessimism and optimism are mostly irrelevant to an objective discussion of these issues. Pessimism, optimism, hope, despair, are all forward looking or predictive. And no one can predict the real future. See Nicholas Nassim Talib’s books on the subject.
People who are “confident, joyful and optimistic” during wartime are very possibly responding to adrenaline or propaganda. I believe that maintaining confidence of winning is a natural evolved response necessary for continuing the fight. When a combatant or an army, or a people, loses confidence, the likely outcome will be a rout (disorderly retreat) or surrender. That’s why it’s critical for leaders to promote high morale among their soldiers and citizens.
Yes, it is possible that many of the poorest and lowest in our culture have lost confidence and given up.
People who are “confident, joyful and optimistic” in the immediate aftermath of war or upheaval are often experiencing the phenomenon of “raised expectations.” Raised expectations and hopes may also be an evolved response that makes survival more likely. I suggest that the Ukrainian and Russian people are demonstrating either “will to fight” or “raised expectations.” The emotions of confidence, joy and optimism may or may not be consistent with the factual conditions of their lives.
Neither confidence nor raised expectations are reliable indicators of the future, short-term or long-term. In the beginning, both armies are probably confident, or at least hopeful, of victory. But armies may be defeated in spite of high morale. Or morale may flag, leading to a bad outcome.
“Raised expectations” are even less predictive, and can be dangerous. For example, at the end of the American Civil War, freed slaves were exultant and optimistic. No one, from Lincoln and Grant and Lee on down to the poorest Northern worker or the poorest Southerner, of either race, could possibly have predicted what would happen in the following century.
For most former slaves, their hopes were dashed. Their physical mobility may have been unlimited. But there was no place to go.
For most former slaves and their immediate descendants, wealth and standards of living remained about the same as under slavery. For some, conditions became much worse. Relatively few African-Americans were able to rise above working-class poverty over the next century.
Even today, I doubt that anyone who has not experienced the cultural, educational, and economic disadvantages of America’s inner-city ghettos can possibly understand the difficulty of upward mobility. — John Hayden
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